Ingrid Lyne

Case background and investigation

Ingrid Maree Lyne was a 40-year-old registered nurse at Swedish Medical Center and a mother of three from Renton, Washington. On the evening of April 8, 2016, she attended a Seattle Mariners baseball game with John Robert Charlton, a man she had met about a month earlier through an online dating site. After the game the pair reportedly went to a bar and then returned to Lyne's Renton home. When Lyne failed to appear the next morning to pick up her daughters from their father, she was reported missing. On April 10, 2016, a homeowner in the Central District of Seattle discovered human remains in a recycling bin roughly 10 miles from Lyne's home, and the King County Medical Examiner later identified them as Lyne and ruled her death a homicide.

Investigators found blood, human tissue, and a pruning saw in the bathroom of Lyne's home, along with trash bags identical to those in which her dismembered remains had been placed. According to police, Lyne's mother, using a cell phone left at the residence, exchanged text messages with Charlton and then contacted authorities. Charlton was arrested on April 11, 2016, and on April 13, 2016, King County prosecutors charged him with first-degree murder and auto theft; he was held on $5 million bail. Additional remains were recovered at other locations in the days that followed, on April 15 and April 18, 2016. Prosecutors described Charlton as a homeless day laborer with a prior criminal record spanning several states.

Rather than proceed to trial, Charlton pleaded guilty to first-degree murder on October 2, 2017, admitting he strangled and dismembered Lyne. On January 5, 2018, a King County Superior Court judge sentenced him to 27 years and 9 months in prison, the term recommended by prosecutors. Charlton was convicted and remains incarcerated in the Washington State prison system; as of 2026 there are no reported appeals that have altered his conviction or sentence, and the case is closed. The recorded status of Conviction is accurate.